Design Workshop

Meet with students and University of Oregon Faculty for a design-oriented brainstorming session. These sessions develop dialogue and informal drawings to represent your ideas. The workshops, often called design charretts, can be a first step towards exploring what types of issues a design team might later focus on. It is a way to understand the breadth of a design problem and then work quickly to identifying possible solutions to later develop. As a workshop alone it the charrettes can be very effective in create long term planning goals and objectives.Workshops can be held as single events, or extend over several weekends.Previous Examples of Design Workshops held by designBridge are:

West University Neighborhood Park ; Winter 2007
Habitat for Humanity Charrette; Spring 2005
SPONORS Charrette; Spring 2006

Full Design Development

Depending on the size of your project an entire studio or seminar course can be created around solving your design problem! For the length of one term (11 weeks) up to 15 design students and at least one University of Oregon faculty member will work with you to address a specific project. Potential end products range from concept development and schematic design to full construction documents that can include stamped drawings, full specifications, and a working budget.

Each project has a UO faculty member, a project manager and a team sized to deliver the product(s) that you want. A number of initial planning meetings help identify the project goals and a timeline that will work for both you and within the academic calendar. Previous Examples of Full Design Development Projects are:

North Eugene High School Garden Learning Center ; Spring 2006
SeQuential Biofuels Bus Shelter; Winter, Spring 2007

Design/Build

This is the complete package. A project may start with a design charrette, go through full design development, and then a team of students manages and builds the project to completion. This is an incredible resource for the community and an invaluable experience to young designers who rarely get a chance to build the designs they envision. It is truly a win-win situation for all involved.

Each project has a UO faculty member, a project manager, and depending on the size may include a specific design leader, and a build leader to make sure the project meets our client’s goals. The entire process usually covers multiple academic terms.Previous Examples of Design/Build Projects are:

Northwest Youth Corp Seedling House; Spring, Summer 2007
BRING Recycling Covered Walkway, Spring 2006

For more information about our services please contact the student director of designBridge at dbridge@uoregon.edu and/or please fill out our online questionnaire about your project to get the process started.